Basham, Arthur Llewellyn. The wonder that was India. . . . 3d rev. ed. London, 1967.
Bose, Atindranath, Social and rural economy of northern India, c. 600 B.C.–200 A.D. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1961, 1967.
Chaudhuri, Sashi Bhusan. Ethnic settlements in ancient India. . . . Calcutta, 1955.
Cunningham, Alexander. The ancient geography of India. London, 1871; re- printed in 1963. Also reissued as Cunningham's ancient geography of India, with notes by S. M. Sastri. Calcutta, 1924.
Dandekar, Ramchandra Narayan. Vedic bibliography. 3 vols. Bombay and Poona, 1946–73.
Dey, Nundo Lal. The geographical dictionary of ancient and mediaeval India. 3d ed. New Delhi, 1971.
Ghoshal, Upendra Nath. The agrarian system in ancient India. 2d ed. Calcutta, 1973.
——. Studies in Indian history and culture. 2d rev. ed. Bombay [etc.], 1965.
Kane, Pandurang Vaman. History of Dharmaśastra. . . . 4 vols. in 5. Poona, 1930–53.
Karnataka through the ages; . . . . Bangalore, 1968.
Law, Bimala Churn. Historical geography of ancient India. 2d rev. ed. Paris, 1967.
——. India as described in early texts of Buddhism and Jainism. London, 1941.
——. Tribes in ancient India. Poona, 1943.
Macdonell, Arthur Anthony. History of Sanskrit literature. London, 1900; re- printed in 1968.
Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra, ed. The classical accounts of India. Calcutta, 1960.
——. The history and culture of the Indian people. 11 vols. Bombay, 1951– (individual volumes periodically revised). The following volumes are relevant for section III of this atlas: 1. The Vedic age; 2. Age of imperial unity; 3. The classical age; and 4. The age of imperial Kanauj.
——. The history of Bengal. Vol. 1. Hindu period. Dacca, 1943.
Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra, and Altekar, Anant Sadashiv, eds. The Vākā&ttod;aka- Gupta age—c. 200–550 A.D. Vol. 6 of A new history of the Indian people. Lahore, 1946; reprinted in 1967.
Malalasekera, George Peiris. Dictionary of Pāli proper names. 2 vols. London, 1937, 1938.
Mookerji, Radha Kumud. Indian shipping: A history of the seaborne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times. 2d rev. ed. Bombay, 1957.
Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. A. A history of South India. . . . 3d ed. Madras, 1966.
——, ed. Age of the Nandas and Mauryas. 2d ed. Delhi, 1967.
——. The Mauryas and the Satavahanas, . . . . Vol. 2 of A comprehensive his- tory of India. Bombay [etc.], 1957.
Pargiter, Frederick Eden. Ancient Indian historical tradition. London, 1922; re- printed in 1962.
Rapson, Edward James, ed. Ancient India. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge history of India. Cambridge, 1922.
Rawlinson, Hugh George. Intercourse between India and the Western world from the earliest times to the fall of Rome. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1926.
Ray, Hem Chandra, ed. History of Ceylon. 2 vols. Colombo, 1959, 1960.
Raychaudhuri, Hemachandra. Studies in Indian antiquities. Calcutta, 1958.
Renou, Louis. Bibliographie védique. Paris, 1931.
Renou, Louis; Filliozat, Jean; et al. L'Inde classique: Manuel des études indiennes. 2 vols. Paris, 1947, 1953.
Shafer, Robert. Ethnography of ancient India. Wiesbaden, 1954.
Sharma, Ram Sharan. Aspects of political ideas and institutions in ancient India. 2d ed. Delhi [etc.], 1968.
Sircar, Dineschandra. The Bhārata war and Purā&ntod;ic genealogies. Calcutta, 1969.
——. Cosmography and geography in early Indian literature. Calcutta, 1967.
Srinivasa Iyengar, P. T. History of the Tamils from the earliest times to 600 A.D. Madras, 1929.
Subbarao, Bendapudi. The personality of India; . . . . 2d rev. ed. Baroda, 1958.
Tripathi, Rama Shankar. History of Kanauj to the Moslem conquest. Benares, 1937; reprinted in 1959.
Walker, George Benjamin. The Hindu world; An encyclopedic survey of Hindu- ism. 2 vols. London and New York, 1968.
Winternitz, Moriz. A history of Indian literature. 2 vols. Trans. from German by S. Ketkar. Calcutta, 1927, 1983; reprinted in New York in 1971.
Yazdani, Ghulam, ed. The early history of the Deccan. 2 vols. London and New York, 1960.
III.A. INDIA OF THE VEDAS AND THE EPICS
In contrast to the maps of atlas section II, "Prehistory," which are based on archaeological remains, those of this sub- section portray the ethnology and geography of India as re- vealed in the earliest-known sacred texts: the Vedas (&Rtod;g, Sāma, Yajur, and Atharva), including their appendixes, the massive Brāhma&ntod;as, the mystical Āra&ntod;yakas, and the Upani&stod;ads; and the great Sanskrit epics the Rāmāya&ntod;a and the Mahābhārata. Given the absence of absolute chronology in the sacred texts and the questionable value of their descriptions, treating the epic traditions in the same section as that dealing with Vedic knowledge may appear anachronistic and unwarranted. Our justification for doing so, however, is historiographic. We do not, of course, portray the events of the Epics as history; but we do maintain that the epic tradition contains valuable ma- terials known during the later Vedic period but for various reasons (to be discussed in this section and in relation to plate III.B.1) ignored in the religious texts of the time. The Vedic map seeks to portray India as it was during the period from about the mid-2d millennium to c. 600 B.C., whereas that of the Epics aims at reconstructing the traditional view of India as it took shape before and at the time of the "Great Bhārata Battle." That battle took place, according to many scholars, about 900 B.C., whereas the traditional date is given as 3102 B.C.
We shall not enter here into the enduring debate over the dates of the Epics. Suffice it to say that the oldest composed portions of both are assignable to some time around 400 B.C., and the bulk of their present form is generally dated to c. 200 B.C. for the Rāmāya&ntod;a and c. A.D. 400 for the Mahābhārata. The historicity of key epic heroes is widely conceded, and the context of their traditional exploits probably predates the 8th century B.C. Despite the anachronistic quality of the sources, their relevance for a comprehension of the historical geogra- phy of early India stems from two considerations: first, tradi- tions are important in themselves; second, portions of the epic traditions appear authentic in the light of certain correspon- dences with "historical sources" and the meager archaeological record. Future archaeological research may well enable the historian to use epic materials with greater confidence than hitherto possible.
Much of the great forest and tribal regions of India remained but little known to the people of the Ganga Plain through the 4th century B.C. The knowledge revealed in the Epics seems to have been derived largely from economic contacts but cer- tainly also includes additions from periods after the 4th cen- tury. The Rāmāya&ntod;a and the Mahābhārata abound with de- scriptions of forest; in fact, virtually all of Rāma's exploits take place in such an environment. The clearing of forests could
Identifying toponyms and peoples believed to have been sit- uated in the outer regions of "Jambudvīpa" (greater India) is rendered extremely difficult by the vagueness of the Epics' de- scriptions and the disagreement among notable modern scholars as to their situation. Some have argued in favor of identifying many such names with areas of Soviet and Chinese Turkestan, while others prefer to locate them within South Asia itself or along its Himalayan fringes. We have not succeeded in recon- ciling most of these differences. However, the Epics do reflect some knowledge of regions to the north of India as well as of many countries of Southeast Asia, designated by the term "Suvar&ntod;advīpa" or "Suvar&ntod;abhūmi" (Continent or Land of Gold). The contacts with Suvar&ntod;abhūmi were growing from about the 3d century B.C. and culminated in the Indianization of much of Southeast Asia by the beginning of the 5th century A.D., the time of the extant redaction of the Mahābhārata.
The maps in this subsection are by no means the first recon- struction of the ethnographic and geographic knowledge of the Vedic texts and Epics. Generations of scholars have struggled with the problem, and their researches have illumined our path. Our attempt, however, is characterized by the first full use of the critical editions of the Rāmāya&ntod;a and the Mahābhā- rata and presents both a review of previous findings and a fresh cartographic interpretation of the available data.
III.A.1, Map (a). Vedic India
The map of Vedic India seeks to portray the probable ethnic distribution and geographic knowledge derivable from the gen- erally scanty references in the Vedic texts, which apply to a period from about the middle of the 2d millennium B.C. to roughly 600 B.C. An example of one of the few toponymically rich passages in those texts is provided by the translation, in the upper left corner of the map plate, of the celebrated "River Hymn" (Nadi-stuti), which enumerates most of the thirty-one rivers mentioned in the &Rtod;g Veda. The cartographic presenta- tion of the &Rtod;g Vedic materials is distinguished by color from that of the Later Vedic texts in order to facilitate a meaningful division of stages in the development of historical knowledge about 1000 B.C., regarded here as the date of the final compila- tion of the &Rtod;g Veda. In the absence of absolute chronology, however, no attempt was made to differentiate time periods within the Later Vedic literature. While the map relates solely
Whatever the original homeland of the Aryans may have been, the &Rtod;g Veda makes no explicit mention of regions dis- tant from the Indian subcontinent. Our cartographic represen- tation of its relevant data does, however, suggest Aryan settle- ments in the regions now between Kabul and Peshawar and linking Kandahar with the Bolan Pass. Both regions lie along historic routes joining central and western Asia with India and, in accordance with hypotheses advanced by archaeologists, could have served as staging areas for an Aryan penetration into India. To the northwest of the two regions there is a strik- ing lack of &Rtod;g Vedic place names, and it is noteworthy that Later Vedic texts regard the Bālhikas of northern Afghanistan as outsiders, while some of them took a similar view of the Gandhārīs. The sequence of names on our map suggests the possibility that the route of the Aryans went south from the present region of Kandahar and bifurcated in the vicinity of modern Quetta. The main body of Aryans might then have advanced by the Yavyavati and Gomati Valleys north to Gan- dhāra and east across the Sindhu (Indus) to the modern Pun- jab, while an offshoot may have gone south through the Bolan Pass and settled in its environs. Sapta Sindhavah is the only region mentioned in the &Rtod;g Veda.
The utility of the &Rtod;g Veda for reconstructing the historical geography of the prehistoric period contrasts markedly with that of the archaeological remains of the Indus Civilization. Whereas the latter provide precise place data, their ethno- graphic value will remain very limited so long as the Indus script remains undeciphered. The literary &Rtod;g Veda, on the other hand, does enrich our ethnological understanding, but it is generally lacking in precise information on spatial distribu- tions. It reveals the names of peoples and tribes with only oc- casional mention of natural features associated with them. The identification of peoples inhabiting given locales therefore re- mains tentative, despite correlational hints provided by the texts and references to contiguity in near-contemporary or later sources. The task is complicated by the seminomadic and pas- toral life of the &Rtod;g Vedic Aryans and by the protracted nature of their advance into the lands of non-Aryan peoples of varied ethnic features, complexions, and nomenclature. The identifi- cation of precise Aryan locales and their environment receives no clear support from their association with indigenous popu- lations, some of whom submitted to them while others retreated to areas of forests and hills.
Details on the Aryan march in different directions from the Sapta Sindhavah region are meager. Only a few place names associated with those events are mentioned; even fewer can be